Sunday, November 8, 2009

Engineering was about to execute a database migration script and we had tested it several times before on a separate environment. However the weekend had come where we shut down the production server to do our jobs.My job was to make sure, after the migration, everything worked fine. There was only one problem. On that weekend, I had a problem with my VPN connection. It was essential for me because without connection it wouldn't be possible to test whether the migration was successful or not. When I raised the call I got a message saying that there is no support on the weekend for internal IT occurencies......Fortunately I could test without having the VPN, but I could not take part in the decisions and coordination of the process because my business email could not be connected anymore. Although I informed all involved parties about the issue and that they should send all related information to my private email rather than using my business email, I only got half of the messages. It was a small challenge to get all required information but I still managed to do the job. Still I asked myself what those guys are doing if someone decides to perform a DNOS attack on the weekend.But I have to be grateful. What surprised me most was, that immediately on Monday, a nice guy from IT came to my desk and showed me how I could access our business email from home without the need of VPN....

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Wishful thinking...really? Let's assume someone has a brain fart and suggests to convert all bugs into tasks, only to get rid of the bug backlog. Gone are all the bugs in a second. All of a sudden you produce bug-free software. What a great achievement. Believe it or not, this really happened.